Starting MMA with a background?

Considering the recent talk about another stupid McGregor Mayweather fight in the making, this time in MMA rules, it is amazing how many people still do not realize how dominant the MMA sport is over the other single combat sports.

Every of the single combat sports actually has gaps that a well rounded MMA fighter can utilize to dominate in a match by dragging the fight in the domain which the athlete making the transition from other single combat sport has lack of knowledge and experience.

It is not a secret between the good MMA coaches that it is actually faster to build a MMA fighter from a person without combat sport experience than from an athlete already skilled in another single combat sport. The reason for that is that to the time it takes to build the MMA related skills, for the athlete with a background you have to add the time needed to unlearn the bad habits from his sport by MMA perspective. And better he is, harder it is to unlearn the habits that already brought him success in his own sport.

It is easier for MMA athletes to cross-train and add and refine skills from the single combat sports using the Bruce Lee’s principal to “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless …” than for other sport fighters to make the transition to MMA. Anyway most the successful transitions are done by athletes from grappling base sports. The only exception is Combat Sambo, which as a system is established as well rounded mixed martial art even before MMA ever started and with its rules provides even more options to the fighters, and has given to the world plenty extremely dominant fighters as Oleg Taktarov, Igor Volvchachin, Sergey Kharitonov, Fedor Emelianenko and Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Share your thoughts and experience how you started training MMA? Did you had to make a transition from other sport? And if McGreggor VS Mayweather fight in MMA rules makes any sense for you?